The second deep-sea service to St. Petersburg

    Maersk Line has added St Petersburg to its Europe-Mexico-Central America service (CRX). The CRX will henceforth call at Tilbury, Rotterdam,

    Bremerhaven, St Petersburg, Rotterdam, Bremerhaven, Vera Cruz, Altamira, Big Creek, Manzanillo (Pan), Moin, Cork, Tilbury.

    Prior to the extension, the service turned at Bremerhaven while the boxes

    to/from St Petersburg used to be relayed through Baltic feeders or

    the Bremerhaven-St Petersburg string of the 'Ecubex' service.

     

    The extension of the CRX to St Petersburg leads to the addition of

    two weeks to the rotation, which will then take eight weeks instead of

    six weeks. Two 2,500 teu ships are added in order to maintain

    weekly sailings. These two additional ships are shifted from the

    Europe-WCSA 'Andean' service, which has been recently suspended.

    Both the CRX and Ecubex are fruit oriented services serving in particular

    the Russian market via St Petersburg. The volumes of bananas

    and other fruits have progressively been containerized over

    the years at the expense of conventional reefer tonnage, leading to

    an increase of containerized shipments that today justify the introduction

    of a St Petersburg direct call.